“The girls are really into iPads. It’s not good. I need to curtail it, though I have to say, so much of that use is reading,” says Heigl, 39. “They’re reading, they’re playing educational games. I don’t allow them to scroll through YouTube videos and stuff; I put some limits on that.”

“But it’s not as mind-numbing as we all are afraid it is,” she adds of screen time.

One recent incident put the situation in perspective, as Heigl’s daughters and teenage niece Madison were sitting around the living room, engrossed in their devices.

“I was like, ‘None of us are connecting or communicating,'” she recalls. “And then I went, ‘Oh, wait a minute — Naleigh and Madison are playing Words With Friends against each other, so essentially they’re playing Scrabble, just without the board on the table. Adalaide is coloring on her iPad, Josh is reading the news and I’m reading a book.”

“We’re all doing things that we would be doing to entertain ourselves, we’re just doing them differently than we did them 20 years ago,” the 27 Dressesstar points out. “It’s okay. It’s not the end of civilization as we know it, I promise.”

RELATED VIDEO: Katherine Heigl Shares Photos of Her Weight Loss Almost 14 Months After Birth of Son Joshua

Heigl tells PEOPLE she doesn’t allow devices at the dinner table (“because we do need to talk to one another, too, and make eye contact”), encourages trips to a local bookstore the family loves and requires the girls to charge their devices outside their rooms at night.

“I don’t allow them in the bedrooms, like, ‘Charge them at night where I can see them,'” she says, joking, “Maybe I should have that rule for my husband.”

Suits season 8 premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on USA Network.

For more from Katherine Heigl, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

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